Thank you once again for taking the time out of your day to check out my column. I must apologize for missing a few months worth of columns. And I must send out a thank you to KINAI77@aol.com for giving me a topic to discuss in this month's column. But I'll get to that in a minute. First of all, for those of you who might now know who I am, my name is Tim Specht. I'm 21 years of age, and I'm from the mid-Michigan area. I'm currently in college, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Ok, that's enough about me. The next section in this column is an email written to me by what I would consider to be a typical environmentalist. By typical, I mean hypocritical, making shrill claims, and completely ignoring all facts and logic. Without further delay, I present a (censored to tone down his/her obscenities) version of the email he/she sent me:

(The following is the exact email that the mystery emailer sent to me)
You're a f***in' dumb-ass kid. You don't know sh**. 20 years old and you think you know what the hell is going on. Brain-washed and outspoken - bad combination. "Power-hungry and wealthy environmentalists"? If you had your facts straight, and looked at the total budgets for the major enviro groups in this country vs. groups that oppose most environmental protections for our public lands (such as oil, mining, and timber companies) you would see a discrepancy of many millions of dollars in favor of these industries. Next, do some more research, since you're an up-and-coming "educated" college student, and look at campaign contributions and who's really "won" over the last several decades when it's come to environmental issues. It's these industries I''ve mentioned. Any major environmental victories have been hard fought and a result of people's actions and convictions, not money and power. Last thing - the CA power crisis wasn't a result of enviro groups. In fact, they were in support of building more power plants. It was companies like PG & E that were opposed to it. They dug their own hole, and now they are asking for bankruptcy protection from guess who? The taxpayers. Oh, one more thing for ya'. You probably have heard of Rage Against the Machine, since you're a college student, right? You're a bit younger than me, though, so you were probably in junior high when their first major album was released. If you have it, listen to Track 6. It's called "Know Your Enemy" - and you know what, kid?, that's what you are. My Enemy. So help me God, if I knew who you were and heard your stupid-ass rantings and ravings, I would seriously F**K YOU UP!!! No questions, no answers, just a beat-down, BITCH! Watch what you say F**KO!, because there's some environmentalists out there that don't give a sh*t about power and money, but do give a sh*t about ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite, and destruction of this earth - our HOME, and will KICK YOUR PUNK-ASS if you keep talking that stupid shit. I'm glad that you provided your name, where you live, and, in fact, what your major is in school (easier to track you down). I will pass your name on to the Appropriate Parties. We REGULATE Asshole! The Eco-terrorists will find you!!!!!!!!

(The following is my reply to the mystery writer)

Hello KINAI.

I must start off by saying that for claiming to be so intelligent, you do not compose a very good message. I think perhaps you should go back to school and determine exactly how you properly confront someone. I cannot take your arguments seriously due to the hostility you expressed, and crude unnecessary language. If you have an argument with me in the future, you will either address me in a non-hostile manner, or you will be ignored.

Now that we have that straight, I would like for you to look at some things. First of all look at the budgets of the environmental groups. Look at what they do. They specialize in getting more, often considerably ridiculous regulations. That's all they do. The resource industries have to make large expenditures to gain access to the resources they need, spend money to pay their employees, and buy their equipment. That severely cuts down on the amount of money they have to spend to lobby with. Not to mention that their services are REQUIRED for this great Nation to properly function.

Have you ever heard of something known as the "law of decreasing marginal returns"? It states that at some point the return you get from moving towards a margin (completely eliminating emissions of something for example) is not worth the expense of getting to that point. With many regulations we have gone up to and in some cases beyond this point. It's just not a sound idea to try and get past that point. Particularly when the US is currently the cleanest nation in the world. Concentrate your efforts to bring all the other nations up to our level first, then we'll worry about improving more here, if needed.

You should be happy about lumber companies, they help do us all a favor, by decreasing the fire risk, as well as keeping the health of the forests up. Selective thinning is in use more and more, and anyone who can't see the benefits of selective thinning hasn't been talking to the right people, but rather been brainwashed by the completely anti logging environmentalists.

The environmentalists have won over the past many years, since the 1960's in fact. They continue to demand more and more and then compromise every once in a while, before starting to demand more again. It is a never ending cycle and if we don't reach a true compromise the cycle will never end, and in the end it'll be the environmentalists holding all the cards.

You have truly been brainwashed if you cannot see that environmentalists are nearly completely responsible for the power crisis... Everywhere says so, including but not limited to the Wall Street Journal. Logic also dictates this to be true. Plus all the links on the Sierra Club (and other environmentalist) website(s) BRAGGING about how they were able to prevent construction of several major power plants are sufficient evidence. I mean why would these groups lie about their accomplishments like that? What do you think will happen when they can't change the prices they charge, the demand rapidly goes up, and the supply stays the same? The power companies had to purchase power from other sources to meet the need and THAT is what put them in debt.

I don't listen to Rage Against the Machine... I don't hold with their ideals.

I'm your enemy? I guess I should feel somehow afraid or threatened, however I just feel that you are a very uninformed individual who has only a very shaky grasp on reality. Oh, you should check out your claims about me ranting and raving. I speak the truth, and there are many experts who speak the exact same truth. If you have an issue with what I say, I challenge you to pull yourself together, gather up your facts, and write your own rebuttal to what I've said. In fact, I'll have the Off-Road.Com land use editor post your rebuttals to the land use page if your rebuttals make sense and can adequately disprove what I have said.

You really should be careful about who you threaten, the FBI and other agencies like to track offenders of this nature down, as they will get a chance to with you. As I mentioned, I do not make things up, I do not lie. I post truths, as they can be best determined. If you don't believe me, you can look for yourself, the truth is right in front of your nose, if you would care to open your eyes and look for it.

In closing, I'd like once again to thank the originator of that email for giving me the inspiration to write this month's column, as well as paint a portrait of the typical environmentalist far better than I ever could have on my own.